Age Of Uprising: Actions speak louder than words for this 16th-century Clint Eastwood

Here’s a funny and possibly unique thing: a 21st-century film based on the 19th-century story of a 16th-century German folk hero, relocated to feudal France with a Danish actor in the lead role... who had to learn French before he could play the part.

That’s enough complication, even before we start on the plot, which has an affluent horse-merchant (Mads Mikkelsen) living in rural bliss with his wife and child, but becoming bent on vengeance after a local nobleman steals a couple of his horses.

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The story is inspired by an 1811 novella by Heinrich von Kleist called Michael Kohlhaas, but it reminded me more of any number of Westerns

The nobleman is too well- connected at court for our man to get legal redress. So he raises a small private army and cuts a swathe across the countryside, seeking justice by foul means, having failed by fair.

The story is inspired by an 1811 novella by Heinrich von Kleist called Michael Kohlhaas, but it reminded me more of any number of Westerns.

It has its moments, and director Arnaud des Pallieres certainly has an eye for landscape and mood, but Mikkelsen, clearly applying the old maxim ‘Don’t get Mads, get even’, is too enigmatic by half, making Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad And The Ugly look downright garrulous.

Mikkelsen,clearly applying the old maxim 'Don¿t get Mads, get even',makes Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad And The Ugly look downright garrulous